298 
fessor Fontaine had held for some time, but we had been unable 
to find any cycads in place. It is a significant fact that in the 
photographic view made by Tyson large pieces of petrified wood 
stand side by side with the cycadean trunk, and, as already 
stated, he says that this occurs in the same beds. Although it 
proved very difficult to locate those of Maryland, still, in conse- 
quence of the very large number that have been found, it was pos 
sible, by the ordinary application of geologic reasoning, to trace 
these with greater or less certainty to their original position. 
There is only one case in which the exact spot was pointed out to 
us at which a specimen had been seen firmly adhering to and pro- 
jecting from an original exposure. This was circumstantially 
described to us by a man who was undoubtedly altogether worthy 
of belief, and who, moreover, could have had no object in color, 
ing the facts. He placed his hand on the spot where he had seet 
the stone projecting for many years, and stated that it subse- 
quently fell out and rolled down into the bottom of a deep gulch, 
where it lay for a number of years longer, being carried with each 
season’s freshet further and further down the gulch. At last his 
curiosity led him to pick it up and take it to his house, where Mr. 
Bibbins obtained it. If this information is reliable, which there 
is no reason to doubt, this specimen, at least, originally occurred 
in the “paint stone,” which I have ascertained to belong to the 
same horizon as that of all the silicified wood. There are seve 
other cases in which the position of the specimens could scarcely 
have been different from that of this one under any of the ordi- 
nary processes by which they were carried to the places where 
they were found, and there is not a single case which negatives 
the possibility of a similar origin. I regard the conclusion 4§ 
altogether reliable that all the fossil cycadean trunks of Maryland 
were primarily entombed in the sandy deposits underlying the 
iron ore clays.* 
Taking these facts in connection with the general flora of that 
horizon, so abundantly developed in certain parts of Virginia, 
are in position to form a somewhat correct idea of the nature 
the vegetation that then occupied the region along that important 
* This refers to the so-called * brown ore” only. The “white ore » js found “el “ 
the dark, carbonaceous clays below the paint stone. 
~ 
wes 
